Pastor David Horner Sermon Archive
Sermon: January 29, 2012
“A Picture of the Church”
Acts 18: 1 - 5 & 18 - 28
Sunday, January 29, 2012
As I begin, I am holding up a copy of the directory of Faith Presbyterian Church. On the front of this directory is a picture. Some might say that this is a picture of Faith Church. But some might say that the real picture of Faith Church is inside the directory in the list of the names of its members and friends and in the information that is listed about them. The picture on the cover is really a picture of the front façade of the building we meet in for Worship and come to for other church meetings and activities.
We are, by the way, planning publish soon a new edition of the Directory which we hope will provide a more complete picture of our church. This will be a pictorial directory. We hope to have your picture in it and pictures of some of us participating in some of the activities of the church.
But as we think of how to capture the essence of faith church in photographs I want us to think of how we picture some of the details of THE CHURCH, the bride of Christ as she waits on earth for her Groom, the returning Jesus Christ.
I think the book of Acts, containing parts of the story of the beginning of the church, provides some snapshots in words of some of the details of the church. Today I have chosen to look at one of those snapshots or photographs in words that occurs in the book of Acts. It involves 4 people, several cities, and covers a territory of thousands of miles.
Our story or snapshot begins at the City of Corinth in Greece. The Apostle Paul had just come there to tell the people there about Jesus. Paul usually traveled with his partner Silas and their associates, which included at various times, Luke, Aristarchus, Titus, and others. But he had left his partner and his associates in Berea and had taken a little working vacation in Athens. Now he had come, alone, to the vital city of Corinth. He would of course go to the Synagogues in Corinth on the Sabbath and, when given a chance, tell the Jews gathered there about Jesus, and that He was the Messiah.
That would only take a few hours a week, and as he had no financial support for this work, he would have to work for a living. Fortunately, all who had been trained to be Rabbi’s or Scribes had also been trained to work at some trade to support themselves. Paul, when he had been Saul, had been trained to be a tentmaker, which was a trade involving making tents, clothing, and other items out of animal skins and animal hair.
When he arrived in Corinth, he found a married couple who were also Jews and practiced the same trade. They were originally from a town on the Southern coast of the Black Sea in what is now Northeastern Turkey. But they had lived and probably worked in Rome for awhile until they had been expelled from Rome along with all other Jews because of an order of the Emperor Claudius.
The Roman Historian Suetonius wrote that the Jews were expelled at this time because of disturbance among the Jews by a certain Chrestus. We do not know if this one called Chrestus is a misspelling or misunderstanding of Christ and if the Jews were expelled because of divisions and perhaps riots caused by some Jews persecuting other Jews who had become Christians. We know that such riots had occurred in some of the towns in Asia Minor.
We also do not know if Aquilla and Priscilla were Christians when they met Paul. If Aquilla and Priscilla were Christians, they had three things in common with Paul, being Christians, Jews, and Tentmakers. If they were not yet Christians, they would have two things in common with him, being Jews and Tentmakers. Paul worked with them and probably lived with them for a while until his partner and associates arrived.
After their arrival, Paul devoted himself more to his evangelistic work but he evidently remained close to Aquilla and Priscilla. They also at some point had become Christians.
After a while, Paul left Corinth. He was about to end what we call his second missionary journey and head back to Palestine and Syria. We do not know if Silas and Timothy traveled with him or stayed in Corinth. But we do know that Aquilla and Priscilla left Corinth with Paul and went with him to Ephesus, a city on the West Coast of Asia Minor, present day Turkey. Paul stayed there just long enough to stir some interest in Jesus, but then sailed east to Palestine. Aquilla and Priscilla stayed in Ephesus. We assume they worked as Tentmakers there, but they also seem to have been lay-leaders in the fledgling church at Ephesus.
I want you to notice that before Paul went to Ephesus, at Cenchrae, Paul had his hair cut for a vow. Cenchrae was the Eastern Port of Corinth. The vow was one of the Jewish vows like a Nazirite vow, that Jews took to show some devotion or gratitude to god. Ones hair was cut short at the beginning and end of the period of the vow and the hair grown during the vow was dedicated to God.
What is important about this is that it demonstrates that although a Christian, Paul was still thoroughly Jewish, participating in distinctively Jewish rituals. He did not give up his culture and ethnicity when he became a Christian.
We Christians are a varied bunch and we always have been. We come from different cultures and ethnic groups and are allowed to continue our connection to them, as long as the individual practices of our culture do not clash with Christian morals. But, back to our picture of the Church.
Paul, having cut his hair and sailed for Israel, went to Jerusalem to visit the First Church. The Church at Jerusalem was still recognized at the first Church, or the Mother Church. Paul had had some disagreements with some who were there and who had come from there, but he still honored their place in the church and visited them and probably reported to them about his work and the new churches he had started.
Then, he went to Syrian Antioch to report to the church that had commissioned him as a missionary and sent him out twice.
Then he started his third missionary journey, visiting some of the churches he had started earlier.
Meanwhile, back in Ephesus, the fledgling church received an interesting visitor. Apollos was a Jewish Christian who was born and raised in Alexandria Egypt. He knew the bible well and was a great preacher and teacher, as well as an evangelist and apologist.
But Apollos had one problem. His theology of the Sacraments was incomplete. He did not know of the Baptism into Christ, he knew only of the Baptism of John the Baptist.
When Aquilla and Priscilla realized this, they did not dispute him in public, but they took him aside and privately taught him about Christian Baptism. Then, eventually they and the other Christians at Ephesus recommended him to the Christians at Corinth when he desired to go there. Apollos proved to be very helpful to the Church at Corinth.
Now, what do we see in this picture of the church? We see laypeople and pastors/missionaries working together and separately to build up the kingdom of God. Aquilla and Priscilla worked side by side with Paul in Corinth and in Ephesus, in the church and in their trade as tentmakers.
We see Apollos, a pastor and missionary receiving instruction from two laypeople and them being willing to help him where he had a weakness.
And we see both Paul and Apollos working separately in two places to build up the churches. As I speak of both Paul and Apollos in this picture of the church I want you to realize that Paul and Apollos may not have ever met. But they knew of each other and respected each other.
So in this picture we see two pastors, and two laypeople working together helping and educating and equipping each other as they together and separately built up the church. We also see, that through Paul, they were all connected to Christians over a thousand miles away from them who were of different cultures and ethnicities. They were all building up Christians, Evangelizing in their cities proclaiming Christ to all, and increasing the church of God in quantity and quality.
That is a good picture for us to study. We too are comprised of Pastors and lay people and we, too are related to Christians in other places and different circumstances.
We too, reach out to others with the good news. Each Tuesday people from this church conduct a Bible Study at the Work Release Center in Lafayette. Each Tuesday and Thursday afternoons people from Faith Church go to Klondike Elementary School and help children with their homework.
And we are all related to each other through Christ and responsible to each other and to other Christians around the world both within our denominational structure and beyond it.
This picture of the church in Acts is sort of a picture of us. May we continue to be accurately described by some of the word-pictures in Acts and in other books in the Bible.
Pastor David L. Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
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